p2pnet.net News:- Famous Hollywood point man senator Orrin Hatch [$174,928 contributed by TV/Movies/Music this year] says he’s delighted with the entertainment industry’s Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2004.

And so he should be. After all, he diligently herded it on behalf of the industry.

It’s a watered version of the infamous copyright act, but still lethal and here, in its fulsome entirety, is what Hatch has to say about it.

Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Mr. President, I want to commend my esteemed colleagues in the Senate for passing S. 3021, the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2004, which I introduced today with my friend, the senior Senator from Vermont. This important legislation is actually a package of several smaller intellectual property bills that the House and Senate have been working to enact over the past two years. This bill strengthens the intellectual-property laws that are vital to the ongoing growth of our economy. In addition to important clarifications to U.S. intellectual property laws, this bill also contains the Family Movie Act, which Representative Lamar Smith [$56,833 contributed by TV/Movies/Music this year] the Chairman of the House subcommittee with jurisdiction over intellectual property legislation, introduced and passed in the House earlier this Congress.

Title I of this Act, the Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2003, (the ART Act), contains a slightly modified version of S. 1932, authored by my colleagues Senators Cornyn and Feinstein [$289,316 contributed by TV/Movies/Music this year] that passed the Senate by unanimous consent earlier this Congress. This bill will close two significant gaps in our copyright laws that are feeding some of the piracy now rampant on the Internet. First, it criminalizes attempts to camcord movies off of theater screens. These camcorded copies of new movies now appear on filesharing networks almost contemporaneously with the theatrical release of a film. Several states have already taken steps to criminalize this activity, but providing a uniform federal law – instead of a patchwork of state criminal statutes – will assist law enforcement officials in combating the theft and redistribution of valuable intellectual property embodied in newly-released motion pictures. Second, the bill will create a pre-registration system that will permit criminal penalties and statutory-damage awards. This will also provide a tool for law enforcement officials combating the growing problem of music and movies being distributed on filesharing networks and circulating on the Internet before they are even released. Obviously, the increasingly frequent situation of copyrighted works being distributed illegally via the Internet before they are even made available for sale to the public severely undercuts the ability of copyright holders to receive fair and adequate compensation for their works.

Title II of this Act, the Family Movie Act of 2004 (the FMA), resolves some ongoing disputes about the legality of so-called "jump-and-skip" technologies that companies like Clearplay in my home state of Utah have developed to permit family-friendly viewing of films that may contain objectionable content. The FMA creates a narrowly-defined safe-harbor clarifying that distributors of such technologies will not face liability for copyright or trademark infringement, provided that they comply with the requirements of the Act. I have been working with my colleagues in the Senate and several leaders in the House – including, most importantly Chairman Smith and Chairman Sensenbrenner [$55,868 contributed by TV/Movies/Music this year] – throughout the 108th Congress to resolve this issue. The FMA will help to end aggressive litigation threatening the viability of small companies like Clearplay who are busy creating innovative technologies for consumers that allow them to tailor their home viewing experience to their own individual or family preferences. I would like to thank my friend, the senior Senator from Arizona, for his and his staff’s assistance in drafting this version of the FMA to resolve concerns that the version of the FMA passed by the House might affect entirely unrelated disputes about commercial-skipping technology. Apparently, some were concerned that language in the House bill stating that this particular safe-harbor provision was not intended to resolve disputes about the legality of commercial-skipping technologies might be construed by courts as evidence that Congress believes that such technologies violate the Copyright Act. Courts do not, cannot, and should not construe the Copyright Act’s safe harbors in this way. For example, when Congress created safe-harbor provisions for certain types of Internet service providers, it did not imply that all others were violating the Copyright Act. Nevertheless, I am pleased that we were able to find language that satisfies even those staff who were fastidious to a fault in insisting that the FMA’s safe-harbor for family-friendly viewing technologies encode absolutely no judgment whatsoever about the proper resolution of entirely unrelated disputes about the legality of commercial-skipping technologies. It would have been tragic if we had allowed a special-interest dispute about advertising to deny parents access to technologies that give them and their children the opportunity to watch movies without being exposed to profanity or images of rape, sex or murder.

Title III of this Act, the National Film Preservation Act of 2004, will reauthorize the National Film Preservation Board and the National Film Preservation Foundation. These entities have worked successfully to recognize and preserve historically or culturally significant films – often by providing the grants and expertise that enable local historical societies to protect and preserve historically significant films for the local communities for which they are most important. This fine work will ensure that the history of the 20th century will be preserved and available to future generations. As a conservative Senator from a socially-conservative state, I occasionally take a few swings at the movie industry for the quality and content of the motion pictures they are currently creating, but I will note for the record that I commend efforts to ensure that important artistic, cultural, and historically-significant films are preserved for future generations, and I commend my friend from Vermont for his perseverance in reauthorizing federal funds to continue this important effort.

Title IV of this Act, the "Preservation of Orphan Works Act," also ensures the preservation of valuable historic records by correcting a technical error that unnecessarily narrows a limitation on the copyright law applicable to librarians and archivists. This will strengthen the ability of librarians and archivists to better meet the needs of both researchers and ordinary individuals and will result in greater accessibility of important works. I applaud my colleague in the House – Representative Howard Berman of California – for his efforts on this bill and am pleased to see it included in this Senate package.

Title V of this Act, the Anticounterfeiting Act of 2004, amends our criminal and civil anticounterfeiting laws to ensure that these laws keep pace with the counterfeiters. Traffic in counterfeit copies of goods protected by American copyrights, patents or trademarks has become a multi-billion dollar drain on our economy. The proceeds of this illegal traffic are stolen from legitimate American companies and then used to fund other criminal enterprises. Unlike several of the other bills in this package that provide tools for combating music and movie piracy, the Anticounterfeiting Act is directed primarily toward combating counterfeiting practices that enable software piracy around the world.

To combat this counterfeiting, companies are using increasingly sophisticated authentication features to distinguish genuine, authorized copies of their products and to protect their customers and distributors. Now, the counterfeiters are fighting back by counterfeiting authentication features or by stealing legally produced authentication features and selling them to counterfeiters. The Anticounterfeiting Act of 2004 will impose criminal and civil penalties upon those who traffic in counterfeit or stolen authentication features. This will ensure that law-enforcement agencies and private rights-holders can halt criminal traffic in counterfeit or stolen authentication features before it even creates an illusion of authenticity that allows counterfeit goods to penetrate legitimate markets and endanger both the growth of our economy and the personal safety of our citizens.

Title VI of this Act, the Cooperative Research and Technology Enhancement Act of 2004 (the CREATE Act), will create new opportunities to innovate when public institutions and private entrepreneurs combine their respective forms of expertise in collaborative, joint research efforts.

As a result, we have long realized the enormous value of these joint research efforts, and we have long realized that their potential cannot be realized unless their participants can benefit from the intellectual property rights generated by such research. Unfortunately, the literal language of Section 102(g) of the Patent Act suggests that non-public information known to some members of a private-public research team can constitute "prior art" that may make the final results of the team research obvious, and thus not patentable. Because non-public information does not usually constitute "prior art" under the Patent Act, the potentially disparate treatment of such information creates a disincentive for entrepreneurs and public institutions to collaborate in joint research efforts.

I believe that we must encourage – not discourage – public institutions and private entrepreneurs to combine their respective talents in joint research efforts. Indeed, Congress committed itself to this principle when it passed the Bayh-Dole Amendments to the Patent Act. The CREATE Act will simply conform the present language of the Patent Act to the intent that has always animated it. I commend Chairman Smith and his staff for their efforts on this legislation and am pleased that it has been made part of this package of bills.

In conclusion, I will again thank Ranking Member Leahy [$168,462 contributed by TV/Movies/Music this year], Chairmen Sensenbrenner and Smith, as well as Mr. Conyers [$43,110 contributed by TV/Movies/Music this year] and Mr. Berman [$136,000 contributed by TV/Movies/Music this year] for their bicameral, bipartisan approach to these bills and to intellectual property issues generally.

I would also like to commend the staff on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, on both sides of the aisle, for their intelligence, diligence, and personal commitment to making the legislative process work in a sensible way despite the best efforts to thwart them by those of us with our names on a certificate of election.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 26th, 2004 at 9:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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